The quality of a hotel is not proven by the number of stars near the entrance of your hotel, but by how your customer writes and talks about you. Hoteliers have for a long time embraced the traditional comment cards, but now that these comment cards have found a new home online in the many travel blogs, hoteliers have a new reality to deal with. The fact is that a bad product or bad service simply cannot be hidden anymore. Hotels can not stop customers from participating in these blog / review sites, and have to find ways to profit from them. I believe Ebay has a great model which allows the supplier (seller) to respond to reviews. Perhaps once some of the review sites allow hoteliers to respond the reviews I can imagine it will help boost sales (like it has on Ebay).

For more information see Diane Clarkson's (Jupiter Research) blog http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/clarkson/archives/2006/06/word_of_mouth_i.html

How do you think hotels should respond to this new reality?